communication with altera fpga starter kit.

Question

hi, i have had this board lying around and i want to try something with it which does more than produces a pattern on the 4 LEDs.

there are these weird HSMC connectors which i cant see an rs232 board(or any board) for anywhere.

is there any way i can use the JTAG connection to emulate a serial port so i can send/recieve bytes from hyperterminal.

i noticed 4 wires in the schematic called Link1,2,3,4. could they have something to do with it?

Is there some kind of megafunction associated with these that acts like a uart?

Thanks for any replies.

Lee

altera_forum · Answer

Which starter kit are you using?

altera_forum · Answer

sorry, i should have said, it's the cyclone III one: http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-cyc3-starter.html

altera_forum · Answer

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is there any way i can use the JTAG connection to emulate a serial port so i can send/recieve bytes from hyperterminal.

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It can be if you can take care of writing driver code yourself. I have deliberated on this idea sometime back. Here is a thread on a discussion on using JTAG as a serial port: http://forum.niosforum.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=4224&st=0&p=16504&#entry16504

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Is there some kind of megafunction associated with these that acts like a uart?

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altera_forum · Answer

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sorry, i should have said, it's the cyclone III one:

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Glad you told that. In that case, you can use this daughter card to upgrade your board: http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?language=english&categoryno=39&no=240

It is by Terasic Technologies and provides facility for RS-232 communication. It is also Altera partner board.

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